Thessalonica

X

A satyr named Ithys, whom George hadn’t met before, came into the camp the next morning. Where the satyrs and centaurs there moped, Ithys bounced and sparkled. “Tell me why,” Ampelus said, scowling, “or I throw something at you.”

“I tell you why.” Ithys leaped in the air from sheer high spirits. “Find woman in village--Lete. Give her all my loving. All my loving, I give to her.” He leaped again, like a happy billy goat.

That instantly raised the satyrs’ spirits, and their phalluses, though the centaurs stayed glum. “Tell me, tell me,” Stusippus exclaimed.

“I want to tell you,” Ithys said. “Yesterday, I see--”

“Tell me what you see,” Stusippus broke in.

“I try. I try. I tell the word” --logos, in Greek, could mean almost anything connected with speech and thought-- “if you not interrupting. You wait. Otherwise, I looking through you.” Ithys stood on its dignity, which was even more absurd than a dog standing on its hind legs. “First, I just see a face--”

“Then what?” This time Stusippus and Ampelus interrupted together.

“I get you, I think. I wave to her.” What Ithys waved was not a hand. “She want me.” The satyr preened. “I see her standing there. She set down her washering. She leaving home, her home. She not want to do it in road, but come out into trees. ‘Love me,’ I say. ‘Do. Please please me.’ She no ask me why. She hold me tight. We do and do and do.” Ithys panted at the memory. Ampelus and Stusippus panted, too. “Not a second time, not a third, not a fourth, not a fifth,” Ithys boasted. “She never say, ‘You can’t do that,’ like women sometimes do. When she finally have to go, ‘Any time at all,’ she say. She say, ‘I need you.’ I’ll be back, yes, yes, yes.”

Ampelus and Stusippus both sighed, jealousy and admiration perfectly mixed. “Nice someone happy,” Ampelus said. Stusippus nodded.

“Why all so gloomish here?” Ithys asked. “All you need is love.” The word the satyr used was related to love, anyhow.

“Need something different,” Ampelus answered, and went on to explain what George was doing in the camp and how the shoemaker and the satyrs and centaurs had tried and failed to reach Thessalonica.

Ithys stayed cheerful. “You not know lovely Lete well, no. You come in, I show you this, too. Maybe even show you maid.” The second part of the offer raised the satyrs’. . . interest. The first part made the centaurs pay attention at last.

“What meanest thou?” Nephele demanded.

The satyr talked for some time. If not explicit, it was interesting. Finally, it said, “You come with me. I show.” It started off, presumably toward the village. George, Crotus and Nephele, and the two other satyrs followed.

Lete, as far as George was concerned, might as well have been called Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Till he walked down its narrow, muddy, twisting main street, he would not have believed any such hamlet still existed in the Roman Empire in these modern, enlightened times.

He had known paganism still survived in the hills above Thessalonica. He had always taken that to mean, though, that in some of those isolated villages pagans still lived side by side with their Christian neighbors.

But he might well have been the first Christian ever to set foot in Lete. That he walked into the village with Ithys and Ampelus and Stusippus, with Crotus and Nephele, argued that he was. Had Christians dwelt in Lete, their crosses and relics and icons would have forced the satyrs and centaurs to stay away.

The villagers stared at the centaurs, but only in surprise, not in superstitious dread. They took the satyrs utterly for granted, nodding and waving to them and calling greetings to Ithys, who was evidently a frequent visitor. Oh, a couple of matrons hustled young daughters presumably maidens off the streets when Ampelus and Ithys strolled by fondling themselves, but that was the sort of motherly precaution Irene would have taken with Sophia had they dwelt here rather than down in the city.

George got a much more careful scrutiny than satyrs or centaurs. The people of Lete were familiar with his companions. He was a stranger, and therefore an object of suspicion till proved otherwise.

He wondered what Bishop Eusebius would have made of a place like this. The short answer, he thought, was hash.

He understood why the good and holy bishop of Thessalonica left Lete alone. The good and holy bishop undoubtedly hadn’t the slightest idea the village existed. Ithys, leading the way, had found it without trouble, but George doubted whether he himself could have come back unaided. Folds in the hills hid a good many villages, but none so well as this one.

“What can they have here?” he asked Crotus.

“Means for your ingress into Thessalonica, an we be fortunate and the cockproud satyr speak sooth,” the male centaur answered.

That was more of a response than any George had dragged out of the creature till now. “What sort of means?” he demanded.

“I know not, not with certainty,” Crotus said. “I had not thought such means yet lay under the sun.”

“If you don’t know what and you don’t know whether, what in” --he almost said God’s holy name, which would have forced his companions to flight-- “do you know?”

“I know we have hitherto failed, which doth vex me, as it doth you, in no small measure,” Crotus said.

George walked along fuming. The male made no more sense than if it had suddenly started speaking Slavic. Seeing his anger and confusion, Ampelus said, “All sorts old things here: old things, strong things. Strong things, but not strong enough out there.”

That didn’t make any sense, either. And then, after a moment, it did, or maybe it did. Christianity was too strong for the old paganism of Greece. As the old faith and old powers fell back, naturally they would bring their talismans with them. Could winged slippers fly without a god in them? Or maybe the satyr meant something else altogether. George would find out.

In the midst of strangeness, one thing was familiar: the grapevine painted outside a budding near the center of the village. George said, “Shall we go in and have some wine?”

Ampelus and the other satyrs nodded. As their heads happily bobbed up and down, so did their phalluses. But Crotus and Nephele drew back in something like horror. “This is why we come not into villages,” Nephele said. “Did you not hear, foolish mortal, that wine doth madden and enrage us?”

That deep voice coming from such a lushly female form never failed to disconcert George. At the moment, his own embarrassment disconcerted him more. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I forgot.”

“Fortunate it is that the folk of Lete have memories better trained to retention,” Crotus said. “They know better than to serve us of the drink that inflameth us-- and that, by its sweet savor, tempteth us to inflammation.” The male’s left forehoof took a quarter of a step toward the tavern. When it noticed, it stood very still indeed. “I want wine,” Ampelus said.

“Wait,” George told the satyr. Pouting, it obeyed. George spoke to satyrs and centaurs both: “Who here is best able to tell us how we can use whatever is in this village against the Slavs and Avars?”

“The taverner,” Ampelus exclaimed.

Crotus and Nephele both loomed over the satyr. “Enough of this japery and nonsense,” the male centaur rambled,

“It is Gorgonius the carpenter,” Ithys said. “He has this--thing.”

“I pray he hath a tongue that scoffeth not,” Nephele said. “Lead on.”

Ithys led. George followed, not without a regretful glance at the wineshop as they passed it. He also came with a certain amount of relief that Menas had locked him and not Sabbatius out of Thessalonica. Sabbatius would have headed for the wineshop regardless of what that might do to the centaurs.

Along with the pleasant smells of new-cut wood and sawdust, Gorgonius’ establishment smelled of leather, an odor with which George was intimately familiar-- and which made him wish he were back in his own city. The carpenter was repairing the webbing of a bedframe when George and his companions came in. “Good day, friend,” Ithys said.

“Good day, good day,” Gorgonius answered, with a broad smile that grew broader when he saw the centaurs. “A good day indeed!” he exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome. Your kind but seldom honors us.”

“Wine,” Crotus said. “We fear it.”

“Aye, aye.” Gorgonius nodded. He was near or past his threescore and ten; his hair and beard were the silvery white that seems to shine even indoors, and his voice sounded a little mushy because he had only a few teeth left in his head. But his eyes were still sharp, and nothing was wrong with his wits. “Satyrs and centaurs together, eh? Centaurs here in Lete at all, eh? Something is curious, sure as sure. And who’s this fellow you have with you?”

“George cometh out of Thessalonica,” Nephele said, sounding portentous in lieu of identifying him as a Christian, which the centaur could not do.

“Is that so?” Gorgonius said. “Is that so? Isn’t that interesting? What are you doing here, George out of Thessalonica?”

“Trying to stay alive.” George did his best to put things in order, from most immediately urgent to long-term goals. “Trying to keep the Slavs and Avars from sacking my city and murdering my family. Trying to drive them away from here for good.”

“That won’t be bad if you can do it,” the old carpenter said, nodding. “These new people and their new powers, I don’t fancy ‘em a bit. Not a bit. They change things around till they aren’t the way they used to be. So how do you propose to go about it?”

“I know a priest, a man who believes as I do.” George picked his words with care, trying to convey to Gorgonius what he meant without naming names that would drive off Ampelus and Ithys and Stusippus, Crotus and Nephele. “Put his power together with the powers that still live in these hills” --he pointed to centaurs and satyrs-- “and we ought to be able to beat the barbarians.”

“A priest, eh? One of your land of priests?” Gorgonius might not have been a Christian, might hardly have seen any Christians, but he had a good notion of how Christian priests, most Christian priests, thought. “Wouldn’t he sooner exorcise our friends here--isn’t that what they call it?--than work alongside ‘em?”

“I don’t think so,” George answered. “He’s--different from most priests.” And he’s doing penance because of it, the shoemaker thought. He didn’t mention that to Gorgonius.

“Well, maybe so, maybe so. It would surprise me, but maybe so.” Gorgonius pointed down toward Thessalonica. “What are you doing here in Lete instead of there?”

“I can’t get back to the city,” George said. “The Slavs and Avars and their powers are between here and there. The band of centaurs and satyrs tried to get me through yesterday during the day, and Ampelus and I tried to sneak through last night. Didn’t work, either way.”

“Wolves,” Ampelus added.

“Ah, those. Yes, I’ve seen those. Nasty things, aren’t they?” Absentmindedly, Gorgonius began stropping a knife on one of the leather straps that would support the mattress. “Well, well. What am I supposed to be able to do to help you?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” George answered. “Ithys thought coming to you was a good idea. All I can do is hope it was right.”

The carpenter didn’t say anything to that. He silently studied George for a while, then turned his gaze on Ithys. The satyr said, “You are Gorgonius. You know of what clan you spring, and why you have that name. I knew the man who founded your clan. You in the later days of your life look like him in the later days of his. I say this to you before.”

“Yes, and every time you’ve said it, I’ve told you what daft nonsense it is,” Gorgonius said. “He was a hero. I make tables. He killed monsters and rescued maidens. I got a cat out of a tree once, if that counts for anything, and I stepped on a cockroach the other day.”

“The satyr hath reason,” Nephele said. “Your foresire had wit and wisdom and knew both how to give and how to receive good counsel, than which few things are rarer among mankind.”

“Wait a minute,” George said. Everyone, aging carpenter and ageless immortal creatures alike, looked at him. “Wait just a minute.” Everyone did indeed seem willing enough to wait. Hesitantly, wondering whether he’d heard what he thought he’d heard and whether he ought to believe it if he had, he pointed to Gorgonius. He didn’t speak to the carpenter, though, but to Ithys and to Nephele. “You’re saying he’s from Perseus’ family.”

“Aye, in good sooth, we are,” Nephele said. “We knew Perseus. Perseus was our friend. Doth surprise you this, mayfly man?”

“A bit,” George said, trying not to show how much more than a bit it surprised him. He remembered thinking, when he’d first met Ampelus, how the satyr had been up in these hills when Paul was writing to the Thessalonicans, and for hundreds of years before that. He hadn’t realized how many hundreds of years, though. He didn’t know how long ago Perseus had lived, but it was back before the Trojan War, which was, by definition, antiquity immeasurable--except that Ithys and Nephele measured it.

“We have reckoned his descendants, even unto the hundred and fifteenth generation,” Nephele said, measuring antiquity most precisely indeed.

“That and a few folleis will get you some wine--well, not you, but the man here,” said Gorgonius, who seemed unimpressed with his illustrious ancestor. “But now I understand why Ithys brought you to me, George.”

George made the sort of intuitive leap that had given him a reputation for cleverness in Thessalonica--among those who cared whether a shoemaker was clever, at any rate. He stabbed out a finger at Gorgonius. “You’ve got Medusa’s head stowed away here somewhere, don’t you, so we can turn the Slavs and Avars to stone with it.”

“Are you out of your bloody mind?” Gorgonius exclaimed. “If the family had kept that horrible thing, they’d have been turned to stone themselves, some of ‘em, anyhow, and I wouldn’t be standing here talking with you. The whole village would be stone, too, and we could fortify it with our cousins and uncles. Daft!” He shook his head.

“Oh,” George said in a very small voice. When a clever man was stupid, he was stupid in a way a man who was stupid all the time could never hope to match, for the clever man’s stupidity, drawing as it did on so much more knowledge, had a breadth and depth to it the run-of-the-mill fool found impossible to duplicate.

Gorgonius took pity on him. ““What I do have, pal,” he said, “is the cap Perseus wore when he got up close to Medusa and her sisters.”

For a moment, that cap meant nothing more to George than that it was the pagan equivalent of, say, a saint’s shinbone in a reliquary in a church. But a saint’s shinbone might work miracles, and so might this cap. “The Gorgons couldn’t see Perseus when he came up to them,” George said.

“That’s right,” Gorgonius said encouragingly, as if George might not be an idiot after all. “Very good.”

“Does it still work?” the shoemaker asked. “Perseus wore it a long time ago.”

“It works.” Gorgonius’ leer rivaled anything Ampelus could produce. “I’ve seen more pretty girls, and more of ‘em, than you’ll ever dream about, pal, even if you live in that big city. Oh, it works, all right.”

Nephele let out a noise half giggle, half horsy snort. The satyrs’ interest in the conversation, which had been small, visibly swelled. George was all at once convinced Gorgonius was telling the truth. He didn’t know whether to be awed or appalled that Gorgonius had figured out a use for the cap so far removed from that originally intended for it.

After a moment, though, he doubted the old carpenter was the one who had only just begun that use. A lot of men’s lives lay between Perseus and Gorgonius. Surely one of the carpenter’s multiple great-grandsires had had that same inspiration. Probably a good many of them had had it.

Gorgonius walked out of the room in which they’d been talking. Instead of having his living quarters above his shop, as George did, Gorgonius lived behind his workroom: Lete was less crowded than Thessalonica and, so far as George could recall, had no buildings taller than one story.

When Gorgonius didn’t come back right away, Crotus rumbled, “Whither is the fellow gone, and for what purpose?”

“An I be not much mistaken, he hath not gone, or rather, he is returned among us,” Nephele answered.

Gorgonius said, “See what a clever lady you are.” His voice came from a point halfway between George and Nephele. His voice was there, but he wasn’t--not so far as the eye could tell, at any rate.

Then he lifted a nondescript leather cap from his head and abruptly became visible once more. “You see,” he said, and George did see. Then he put the cap on again, and George saw no more. He was tempted to cross himself, to learn whether the power of the holy sign was stronger than that of the cap which had befooled Medusa and her sisters in ancient days and, evidently, other, more attractive females since.

He held his hand still. The holy sign might destroy all the power the cap contained. It would surely rout the centaurs and satyrs, who had done so much to help him.

“Come back to our eyes, Gorgonius,” Nephele said. “Come back, that we may all take counsel together, each judging the probity of the others by examining their countenances.”

“All right.” Between speaking one word and the next, Gorgonius reappeared. “You’re saying you want me to let this fellow” --he pointed to George-- “borrow my cap here. Who’s to say I’ll ever see it again?”

“You can’t see it now, half the time,” George pointed out.

“That’s true,” the carpenter said. “Aye, that’s true.” He smiled at George, who thought he’d won a point. But even if he had, a point was not the game. Gorgonius said, “Why should I risk something that’s been in the family for so long, to help a stack of people who have no use for it, don’t believe it’s any good, and would destroy it if they could?”

He sent the question toward Nephele, but the female, Crotus, and the satyrs looked with one accord at George. “Why?” he said. “I can give you only one answer: whatever you think of the folk of Thessalonica, having the Slavs and Avars sack the city would be worse--for us and for you, too.”

“In the old days,” Gorgonius said meditatively, “I could have gone down into Thessalonica, and so could they.” He nodded toward the centaurs and satyrs. “Oh, Crotus and Nephele might not have wanted to, on account of the wine, but they could have. Now, though, one of those priests’d be on me like a fox on a rabbit. And my friends, they can’t go at all, not with all the saints and such who’ve been through there one time or another. Is that better than not having any Thessalonica at all? I wonder, George. I do wonder.”

“They think so,” George answered. Now he nodded at Ithys and Ampelus and Stusippus, at Crotus and Nephele. “They wouldn’t have brought me here if they didn’t. And they’ve seen more of the Slavs and Avars than you have.”

“You think so, do you?” Gorgonius touched the cap that had come down from Perseus. “With this, I can see what I like. I told you that already.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I didn’t much like what I saw, I will say that. But to save arrogant Thessalonica with something the town’s too proud to believe in … it gravels me, that it does.”

“If I get down there, if I can get into the city, I’ll be bringing back a priest, don’t forget,” George said. “The old powers can’t fight the Slavs and Avars and their gods and demons, not alone. We know that. What I believe in” --he had to keep coming up with circumlocutions for Christianity-- “may not be strong enough by itself, either. Together . . . we can hope, anyway.”

“Hope came out of the box last of all,” Gorgonius said. He made that clicking noise again and stood very still, taking his own time to make up his mind. When Crotus started to say something, the carpenter tossed his head in negation. “I’ve heard all I want.” The centaur did not try to speak again. The satyrs masturbated nervously.

Outside, far off in the distance, a wolf howled. But it was not an ordinary wolf; George had grown too well acquainted with the horrible howls of the Slavic wolf-demons to mistake them for anything but what they were. Very slightly, Nephele shuddered.

Maybe that howl helped Gorgonius decide. Maybe, concentrating as he was, he didn’t even hear it. But he came out of his brown study only moments after its last echoes had died away. Holding out the cap to George, he growled, “You’d better bring this back, or I’ll be angry at you.”

“If I don’t bring it back,” the shoemaker answered, “odds are I’ll be too dead to care.”

The first thing George discovered about being invisible was that he wasn’t invisible to himself. That came as something of a relief. Not being the most graceful man ever born, he had trouble planting his feet even when he could see exactly where he was putting them. Had he not known where they were going, his best guess was that he would have broken his leg, or maybe his neck, long before he got close to Thessalonica.

The next thing he discovered was that, when he was invisible, people didn’t notice him. That made perfect logical sense, of course--it was why he needed Perseus’ cap in the first place. It brought problems, too, though, problems he hadn’t expected. As he walked up and down Lete’s narrow streets, people didn’t get out of the way for him. Why should they have done so? They had no idea he was there. All the dodging was up to him. Once he had to say “Excuse me” out of thin air, which startled the man who’d collided with him.

Something else occurred to him after he bumped into the villager. He asked Gorgonius about it when he got back to the carpenter’s place. “Took me years to wonder about that,” Gorgonius said, “but, seeing what you’re going to be doing, I can understand how it would be on your mind. Best I can tell, dogs don’t take my scent when I have the cap on, and nobody and nothing hears you unless you speak out loud.”

“Oh, good,” George said. “By everything I’ve heard, wolves use their noses more than their eyes, but if dogs don’t notice your odor, I’m going to hope the wolf-demons won’t notice mine.”

“I don’t know anything about demons,” Gorgonius said. “If their power is strong enough, they might be able to beat the strength in the cap.”

“The power inhering in them is not to be despised,” Nephele said.

George didn’t despise the wolf-demons, or any of the other powers the Slavs and Avars controlled--if the control didn’t run in the other direction. They frightened him out of his wits. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” he said. “This cap is my best chance--probably my only chance--to get back to Thessalonica. I’m going to use it. I’ll be back here with Father Luke two or three days after I set out--I hope.”

“May Fortune favor you,” Nephele said. She spoke of Fortune as a power in its own right. As a Christian, George knew he wasn’t supposed to think of it that way. As a man who sat down with some friends to roll dice every now and then, he couldn’t help thinking of it so.

He slept in the straw in Gorgonius’ bam that night; it made a better bed than the one of dry leaves he’d shared with Ampelus and Stusippus, and not only because he didn’t have a couple of satyrs in it with him. When he woke up, he didn’t look like a young forest anymore: he wasn’t covered with leaves. Being covered with straw instead, he looked like a young unmowed field instead.

Gorgonius gave him a slab of bread and a stoppered jug that almost surely contained wine. Nephele and Crotus both made an elaborate pretense of not looking at it. Though they turned their heads away, their eyes had minds of their own, and kept sliding back toward the jug. The satyrs, more than humanly fond of wine, made no bones about watching the jar.

As soon as George could see his feet and the path they would take, he left Lete. His breath smoked in the chilly air. He told himself firmly that he would presume no one but he could see it. Had the truth been otherwise, Gorgonius would have mentioned it. . . wouldn’t he?

George knew the direction in which he’d have to go. He’d traveled part of that road already. He wished he’d been able to travel all of it. Then he wouldn’t have had to involve himself with such potent pagan powers as Perseus’ cap. Even if he was less devout than many in Thessalonica, he did believe.

“Well,” he murmured, “if Eusebius wants to impose a penance on me after all this is over, I’ll observe it. I just want this to be all over.”

He hadn’t been walking for more than half an hour before he spotted Xanthippe and Demetrius out on a meadow. The female centaur and the young one (young enough, perhaps, not to have been in a position to know St. Paul when he’d traveled through this land more than five centuries before) both moved easily, showing no signs of the wounds they’d taken from the Slavic wolf-demons, wounds that would have laid George up for weeks or lolled him.

They also showed no sign of having any idea he was around. He did not call out to them. No telling who-- or what---might be listening. Good thing Ampelus didn’t rescue John, the shoemaker thought. He wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut long enough to get full good from this cap.

Even that uncharitable judgment of his friend reminded George how much he missed Thessalonica and all its people. He shook his head, revising that thought as soon as he had it. He didn’t miss Menas even a tittle.

He drank some wine. Between that and the steady exercise of tramping through the hill country, he felt warm enough, though the early-morning air still had a chilly edge to it. The right side of his mouth twisted up into an ironic smile. He’d had more exercise lately than he’d ever wanted.

The morning was still young when he saw his first wolf. It wasn’t far from the place where he and the centaurs and satyrs had fought the Slavic demons, and stood by the side of the path, as if waiting for him to come past so it could finish him for good instead of just driving him back into the hills.

He stopped in his tracks. Knowing he was invisible was one thing. Believing it when his life depended on its being so proved something else again. The wolf-demon’s tongue lolled out, impossibly red against its dark gray fur. Its eyes glittered with alertness. Its head turned this way and that. For a moment, it looked straight at him. Dared he believe it could not see him, could not sense him?

If he didn’t dare believe that, what point to going any farther? He walked past the wolf, close enough so that he could have kicked it in the ribs. As he moved past, the wolf-demon let out a puzzled whine, as if it had the feeling it should have been noticing something it was missing. George reached up and touched the leather cap. Now he believed.

He went almost jauntily after that. He caught himself just before he started whistling a happy little tune. That would have been stupid--odds were, fatally stupid.

More wolves than the first one guarded the trails down to Thessalonica. He passed them all. Some seemed to have no notion he was anywhere nearby. Others, like the first, looked and sounded discontented, but could not understand why they dimly suspected something was wrong.

And then George approached Vucji Pastir. The Slavic demigod who shepherded wolves had a couple of his charges close by; he was talking to them in a language made up of yips and growls. His glowing green beard, George saw, had grown out to its full magnificence once more: the barbering his own sword had done proved as impermanent as the wounds the centaurs had taken.

Vucji Pastir knew he was coming. That was the impression he got, anyhow, from the demigod’s demeanor. Vucji Pastir urged his wolves out onto the trail as a man hunting boar would have urged on his hounds. The wolf-demons whined and lashed their tails.

They were, George realized joyfully, trying to tell their master they could find no sign of any impertinent Christian shoemaker. Vucji Pastir peered this way and that. Once, as the wolves had done before, the demigod looked right at George--and, evidently, saw nothing.

Or perhaps, as the wolves had also done, Vucji Pastir saw next to nothing. He frowned, scratched at the roots of his green hair--and then looked in another direction. George let out a silent sigh of relief. He didn’t think Perseus’ cap would get a harder test till he drew far closer to Thessalonica.

He was soon proved wrong. He hadn’t gone more than another couple of furlongs before he encountered Vucji Pastir again, this time with a different pack of wolf-demons. Again the Slavic demigod almost spotted him. Again the demigod apparently could not believe his own eyes.

As George hurried on toward the city, he wondered how Vucji Pastir had been behind him and then in front of him without, so far as an impertinent Christian shoemaker could tell, crossing the intervening space. Had the shepherd of the wolves been first in one place and then in the other? Or had he manifested himself in both at once? “Would he show up again and again, on the lookout for George, all the way down to the city wall?

Sure enough, George saw him and he did not see George several more times, there in the hill country. Toward the end of the day--and also a good deal of the way toward Thessalonica--the shepherd of the wolves looked so upset at having faded to spot George that the shoemaker was tempted to go up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Excuse me there, friend, but can I help you find somebody?”

He convinced himself, after some silent argument, that that was not a good idea, no matter how he would have enjoyed watching a demigod jump.

Despite Vucji Pastir, despite the wolf-demons, George made better time down toward Thessalonica than he’d expected, approaching the city before the sun had sunk in the west. That was not what he wanted. If he went up to a postern gate in the dead of night, he could slip off Perseus’ cap and claim no one had noticed him till he got there. If he tried that in the afternoon, the guards would see him materialize out of thin air. So would the Slavs, with results liable to be unpleasant.

Waiting for nightfall proved harder than he’d expected. The woods near Thessalonica were full of Slavs, some hunting, others taking axes to trees and bushes to fuel their fires. They had no notion he was there but, like the fellow back in Lete, kept doing their best to blunder into his invisible but not incorporeal form. If one of them did chance to trip over his foot, he did not think a simple, friendly “Excuse me” would set matters right.

Carefully, he worked his way around the wall till he neared the Litaean Gate. The men on the wall there would be likeliest to know him and to recognize his voice when he came up to the gate. So would the men at the postern gate by the main gateway. If he presented himself and they wouldn’t let him into the city… he didn’t want to think about that.

By the time he’d found a position from which he could keep an eye on the gate, twilight was falling. The Slavs built up the fires in their encampments and started cooking their supper. The odors of roasted meat and bubbling porridge made George’s stomach growl. He’d long since finished the bread and wine Gorgonius had given him.

Night quickly swallowed twilight. George waited for the campfires to the back to embers, and for most of the Slavs to shelter under blankets and furs and whatever else they used to ward off the cold of night. George wasn’t using anything to ward off the cold of night. His teeth chattered. If he froze to death out here in the woods, would his corpse stay invisible till a storm knocked the cap off his head?

“One more thing I don’t want to find out,” he muttered.

By what he judged to be the fourth hour of the night, the encampments were about as quiet as they ever got. He started picking his way between a couple of disorderly clumps of huts and tents. One hand held the cap tight on his head, the other was on his swordhilt. If by some mischance he did run into a Slav, he thought his best bet was to kill the fellow quickly, giving him no chance to cry out.

Instead of a Slav, he almost ran into the Avar wizard.

The fellow loomed up before him, outline distorted by the fringes and furs of his costume. George froze: metaphorically, to go with the literal cold that had afflicted him. From everything Gorgonius had said, from everything George himself had seen, the Avar should have had no idea he was there.

But the wizard was as wary as the wolves and as Vucji Pastir. He murmured something in his incomprehensible language and stared right at--right through--George. He took a step forward, one hand outstretched, as if to seize the shoemaker.

Heart pounding, George jumped to one side. If the Avar priest had pursued him, he would have run for the gate with every bit of strength he had left. But the Avar kept on walking toward his own tent, which, George saw, lay not far away. Maybe he hadn’t sensed George at all. The shoemaker could not make himself believe it.

He looked up to the wall, wondering which of his friends were on it now. When Menas locked him out of Thessalonica and the Slavs bore down on him, he hadn’t thought such things would matter again. How glad he was to discover they did.

He was within bowshot of the wall now, in the empty area the Slavs and Avars entered only when they were attacking. There was the iron-plated bulk of the Litaean Gate ahead, and there, inset into the wall, the postern gate beside it. That postern gate drew him like a lodestone.

Once there, he found a new question: how hard to rap on it. Too softly, and the guards wouldn’t notice. Too hard, and the Slavs would. His first tap was too tentative. His second was so loud, it frightened him. He looked anxiously back toward the barbarians’ encampment. No shouts rose there. He knocked again.

A tiny grill in the center of the gate opened. “Who’s there?” a guard demanded. “Stand and be recognized.”

“It’s me--George,” George said. “For the love of--” He cut that off, not knowing what God’s name would do to the cap. “I managed to get away from the Slavs and Avars and make it back here. Let me in.”

Through the iron grill, he saw one of the guard’s eyes and part of his cheek. “Stand and be recognized,” the fellow repeated. “If you’re really a Slav who speaks Latin, you’re going to be a dead Slav who used to speak Latin.”

“But I’m in front of-- Oh.” Again, George broke off. He was glad the guard couldn’t see him blush. The guard couldn’t see him at all, because he was still wearing the cap he hadn’t wanted to test with God’s name. He’d remembered it in that context, but not in the context of making him invisible. Feeling a fool once more, he took it from his head.

The guard recoded. “Kyrie eleison!” he exclaimed. “It is you, George. How in Christ’s holy name did you just spring out of thin air like that? I’d have sworn nobody was there.”

“Let me in,” George said. If the cap couldn’t bear holy names, it wouldn’t be much good in Thessalonica, or maybe ever after. George hoped that wasn’t so; otherwise, he’d have a much harder time getting Father Luke out to Lete. “Open the gate, curse it, before the Slavs figure out I’m here.”

Wood scraped on wood as the guard unbarred the postern gate. It swung open. George darted back into the city. The guard closed the gate after him and set the bars back in place. George allowed himself the luxury of a long, heartfelt sigh of relief.

“Don’t know how you managed to stay in one piece out there, but I’m glad you did,” the guard said. He turned away, continuing over his shoulder. “Come along with me. Tell the rest of the crew how you did it.”

George didn’t want to tell anybody how he’d done it. He also didn’t want to return to his normal routine, which would make slipping out of Thessalonica again all the harder. And so, wondering what would happen, he set the leather cap back on his head.

“I want to tell you, George, you frightened me out of--” The guard noticed George hadn’t answered. He turned around to look for the man he’d admitted. “George?” His eyes got big. He crossed himself. “George? Where in the devil’s name did you go?” He scratched his head. “Were you ever here at all, or am I daydreaming--nightdreaming? I’ve got to get more sleep, that’s all there is to it.” He yawned.

“What’s going on there?” one of the other guards called from the main gate. Since the fellow who had admitted George didn’t know what was going on, his explanation was fumbling at best. While he stuttered and mumbled, George slipped past him, heading home.

He was glad he could do so still cloaked in invisibility. When the guard signed himself, he’d again feared the magic in Perseus’ cap would dissolve. He wondered why it hadn’t: perhaps because the guard had made the sign of the cross to protect himself, not to lash out at that which had startled him.

Thessalonica’s streets were dark and quiet and cold. George wished for a torch to light his way--and then, after a moment, he didn’t. No one could see him, but everyone would be able to see the torch. That just might cause talk in the city.

Here came a fellow swaggering along as if he owned the street. The stout bludgeon he carried in his right hand was doubtless intended to persuade anyone who might doubt his view of the situation. George reached up to make sure the cap was firmly on his head. This was a fellow Thessalonican he had no interest in knowing better.

Away from the main avenues, which formed a grid, Thessalonica’s streets wandered crazily. Without a torch, George got lost a couple of times and had to backtrack. If the Slavs and Avars broke into the city, he suspected some houses would go unplundered simply because the barbarians couldn’t find them.

Shouts told him he was getting close to home. They weren’t shouts from anyone who’d seen him. They were Claudia’s shouts, aimed at Dactylius. In the nocturnal stillness, they carried a long way. Anybody who cared to listen could get an earful of Claudia’s views of her husband’s shortcomings. Anyone who didn’t care to listen was liable to be awakened.

You could throw a rock or an old shoe at a cat. George had no idea how to make Claudia shut up.

Partly guided by her abuse, he found his own front door. He tried the latch. The door was barred. He knocked on it. The same problem applied here as it had at the postern gate: he wanted to wake his family, but not the neighbors. He knocked again, louder, and hoped he wasn’t being too loud.

After a while, he heard someone moving inside. Theodore’s sleepy voice came through the door: “Who’s there?”

“I am,” George said.

“Father?” Theodore undid the bar. Before his son opened the door, George remembered to snatch the cap off his head. He didn’t want Theodore thinking he was a ghost.

He took off the cap just in time. The little lamp Theodore held in his left hand seemed dazzlingly bright. In Theodore’s right hand was the longest, sharpest awl in the shop, in case George had turned out to be somebody else. Theodore dropped the awl with a clatter, set down the lamp, and embraced his father, bursting into tears as he did.

Somehow, George got into the shop and closed the door before Irene and Sophia dashed downstairs and added their embraces and tears to Theodore’s. “Thank God you’re safe,” Irene said, over and over. “Thank God you’re here to stay.”

“I’m not here to stay,” George said. His wife stiffened against him. He had to drag his words out one at a time: “I have to leave the city again, or else, I think, it will fall.”

“How can you leave the city?” Sophia demanded. “Stay here with us. You’ll. . . you’ll. . . Something bad will happen if you don’t.” She’d probably been trying to say something like, You’ll get killed if you don’t, but hadn’t been able to do it.

“I don’t think so.” As George spoke, he set Perseus’ cap on his head. His wife and children cried out in astonishment as he disappeared. He took off the cap and became visible once more. “You see? The Slavs won’t even know I’m anywhere around.” He knew he was making it sound easier than it would be, but he didn’t want his family worried.

Irene pointed to the cap. “Where did you get that? Who gave it to you? Who--or what?”

Quick as he could, he explained what it was and where he’d got it. Irene’s disapproval grew with every word he said. He tried to forestall her: “Could you get me something to eat, please? I’ve been tramping all over everywhere on not very much, believe me.” Bread and honey and olives and wine put new heart in him.

But no sooner had he taken the last swallow than Irene said, “Now--why did these pagans and these, these creatures send you into Thessalonica and expect you to come back out again?”

“They want me to bring Father Luke to them,” George said.

He’d thought that would startle his wife, and it did. “But they’re satyrs and centaurs and fairies and pagans,” Irene protested. “What do they think a man of God will do for them?”

“Help drive back the Slavs and Avars and their powers,” George said. “They aren’t strong enough to do it by themselves. We may not be strong enough to do it by ourselves. Together, God willing …”

“Would Father Luke go?” Sophia asked. “I can’t believe a priest of God would hobnob with these, these things.” She shivered.

“I think he will,” George answered. He explained the penance Eusebius had set on Father Luke for manipulating the Avars’ thunder gods. “I’m going to ask him, anyhow. He’s not so set in his ways as most of the other priests I know.”

“What if he won’t go, Father?” Theodore said. “Will you stay here then?”

“Yes, then I will stay,” George said. “If we come through the siege, I’ll have to go up into the hills afterwards and give the cap back to Gorgonius. But for now, I’ll stay.” He held up a hand. “But if I do go with Father Luke, don’t let anyone know I’ve come back into the city now. just say you hope I’m all right and you think you’ll see me again.”

“What I hope,” Irene said fiercely, “is that Father Luke tells you he wants nothing to do with this scheme, and hat it’s mad, pagan wickedness. And I hope you listen o him, too.”

“If he says that, I will listen to him,” George promised. If he says that, I’ll be back here in an hour or so, and we’ll go on about our business and hope for the best. I don’t know what else we can do.”

“We’ll wait up for you,” Irene said. Sophia and Theodore nodded.

“All right.” George would sooner have told them to go back to bed, but he knew they wouldn’t listen. He said, “In case I don’t come back here, remember, don’t let anyone know I was in the city. If people are gossiping up on the wall, the Slavs and Avars are liable to hear them and find some way to stop Father Luke and me.”

His son and daughter nodded again. At last, reluctantly, so did Irene. George embraced her, knowing he was using up a marriage’s worth of faith in a night, and going into debt besides. If it didn’t come out right--if it didn’t come out right, he doubted he’d be in any position to apologize.

He hugged Theodore again, and then Sophia. “Everything will be fine,” he said. Words had power. They were magical things. Saying that made it likelier to come true. After a last awkward nod, he set Perseus’ cap on his head. His wife and children exclaimed again, so he knew he’d vanished He opened the door and went back out into the night.

St. Elias’ church was only a few blocks away. Its doors stood open, as they always did. It was dim and dark inside, though, with but a handful of candles burning. George’s shadow flickered and swooped like an owl after mice as he walked down the aisle toward the altar, in front of which Father Luke stood praying. Probably still at his penance, George thought.

At the sound of George’s footsteps, the priest turned. Even in the semidarkness, Father Luke’s smile glowed. “George!” he exclaimed. “Thank God you’re safe!”

“Yes, I--” George stopped in confusion as he realized he was still wearing the cap. “You can see me?”

“Of course I can.” Now Father Luke gave him a quizzical look. “Shouldn’t I be able to?”

“This is hallowed ground,” George muttered, reminding himself He hoped that meant nothing more than that the magic in Perseus’ cap was overcome by a stronger power here, not gone for good. Only one way to find out. “Your Reverence, will you please not think I’m a crazy man if I ask you to step outside with me for a minute or two?”

“George, I could think you were a great many things,” the priest answered, “but I’m hard-pressed to imagine you crazy. I’ll come with you.”

George couldn’t feel anything different happen when he left the holy precinct. Father Luke, though, suddenly jerked in surprise. George let out a sigh of relief. He took off the cap. His reappearance startled Father Luke again. “You see, Your Reverence,” George said.

“Yes, I see,” Father Luke said. “Or rather, I didn’t see you for a little whole there. I suppose you’re going to tell me there’s a story attached to this, this--vanishing trick.”

“There certainly is,” George said, and proceeded to tell it. Only the faintest light leaked out of the church. Shrouded in darkness and shadow, Father Luke’s face was unreadable as the shoemaker went through the strange things that had happened to him since Menas slammed the postern gate in his face.

When he’d finished, Father Luke stood silent for a while, then said, “This village of Lete and others like it up in the hills, they sound as if they’re ripe for evangelizing one day soon.”

“That may be so, Your Reverence,” George said in some alarm, “but--”

The priest held up a hand and laughed quietly. “But one day soon isn’t quite yet,” he said. George nodded. Father Luke stood in thought for another little while, then said, “Well, let’s go.”

“Just like that?” George said in surprise.

“Just like that,” Father Luke agreed. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but--” Only a couple of days before, George had been thinking about the difference between what he wanted and what life commonly handed him. Something else crossed his mind, too: “What will Bishop Eusebius do to you after you come back from consorting with pagan powers again?”

“I don’t know,” the priest answered. “Whatever it is, he will do it and I will accept it. If we save the city, he’ll be able to do it. If Thessalonica falls to the Slavs and Avars, what Bishop Eusebius might want to do to me becomes a bit less important, wouldn’t you say?”

Since that was exactly what George would have said, he didn’t say it. Instead, he nodded again. “Thank you, Your Reverence.”

“For what?” Now Father Luke sounded startled. “You’ve been risking your life, and maybe your soul as well, for the sake of the city. Wouldn’t you call me mean-spirited if I did anything less?” Without giving George a chance to reply, he started west along the street on which St. Elias’ church lay. “You did say you came in at the Litaean Gate?”

“That’s right.” George hurried after him. If the priest was worried about traveling through Thessalonica by night without even a torch to light his way, he showed no sign of it. George said, “Uh, Your Reverence, the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how to get you out of the city and past the Slavs and Avars without them spotting you.”

“God will provide,” Father Luke said serenely. “His plans are hidden from mortal eyes, but never from His own thought. Now, I suggest you put on that extraordinary headgear you borrowed. You won’t want to leave the fellow at the postern gate any more confused than he is already.”

“You’re right about that,” George said. He and Father Luke were walking past the cistern where the priest had defeated the Slavic water-demigod. Seeing it reminded George how urgent their mission was. He set the leather cap on his head. He’d carried it till then, out of a vague sense that vanishing in front of Father Luke would be rude.

“Extraordinary,” the priest repeated when he did disappear.

No footpads came leaping out of deep shadow to assail Father Luke. That was as well for them, since he now had more unseen protection than the power of the Lord alone. On a cosmic scale, George supposed his using Perseus’ cap to baffle robbers would be only slightly more important than Gorgonius’ using it to spy on good-looking women, but, as a mere man, the shoemaker found the cosmic scale too large to worry about anyhow.

When he and Father Luke got to the Litaean Gate, he discovered a new crew of guards had come on duty since he’d entered Thessalonica. He was glad of that; as things were, the fellow who’d admitted him wouldn’t be faced with the improbability of Father Luke’s wanting to go out along with the flat impossibility of his own arrival.

The new man at the postern gate was surprised enough as things were. “Why on earth do you need to go out there, Your Reverence?” he asked Father Luke.

“Because I have reason to believe the Slavs and Avars are planning something particularly devilish, and I have the chance to forestall it,” the priest answered: all true, but none of it very informative. Father Luke put some snap in his voice, saying, “Are you going to listen to me, or shall we send for Bishop Eusebius to tell you what he thinks?”

George knew sending for the bishop was the last thing Father Luke wanted. The guard didn’t. Hastily, he said, “All right, Your Reverence. You know what you’re doing, I’m sure.” He unbarred the postern gate and pulled it open. Perhaps because it had been opened not long before to admit George, the hinges did not squeak much.

Father Luke got between the guard and the open gate for a moment. That let George slip out ahead of the priest The postern gate shut behind Father Luke. “Well, well,” he murmured, peering this way and that. “How best to get past the Slavs and into the woods?”

“Would you like to wear the cap yourself, Your Reverence?” George asked. “I got past them once in the daylight. I expect I can do it again.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” Father Luke stepped away from the sheltering shadow of the wall. “We’ll just go on and trust in God.”

In every church in Thessalonica, in every church in the Roman Empire, in every church in Christendom, priests preached sermons on the glory of martyrs. St. Demetrius was a martyr for the faith. George felt horribly certain Father Luke was about to become another one.

As Father Luke had stood between the guard and the postern gate, so now George stood between the priest and the encampment of the Slavs and Avars. He told himself that was useless: if he was invisible, the barbarians would see right through him and spot Father Luke. He kept on doing it anyhow, on the notion that it couldn’t hurt and might possibly do a little good. He didn’t know exactly how the invisibility worked. If it made people see around him instead of turning him transparent, maybe it would make the barbarians see around Father Luke, too.

With every step he took, he expected a hoarse shout from a Slavic sentry. He glanced back at Father Luke. The priest’s lips were moving in prayer. Maybe that was why the Slavs and Avars faded to spot him as he walked across the open ground toward the woods. Maybe George-- and Perseus’ cap--did help shield him. Whatever the reason, no outcry came.

In among first brush and then trees, George murmured, “Thank God.” Father Luke heard that. The shoemaker thought he smiled, though in the darkness he had trouble being sure. “Did I not say the Lord would provide?” the priest said quietly. “If He sent a chariot and horses all for fire for Elijah, surely He could manage something rather less dramatic for me.”

George wondered what sort of miracle God had worked. Had He cloaked Father Luke in a separate bit of invisibility, or had He used Perseus’ cap to His own ends? Could He do that with magic not His own? George had no answers, but those were intriguing questions.

He wondered what Father Luke thought. If he ever had the chance in a place where making noise mattered less, he resolved to ask him. Of one thing he was certain: this was not the moment.

Having been this way before, he guided Father Luke north. He did not think, though, that he could find the hills beyond those he knew without help from Ampelus or one of the other creatures out of legend. He would have to get to the encampment of the centaurs and satyrs on his own.

Somewhere ahead in the woods, a wolf-demon howled. George knew the creature could not sense him, not when he wore the cap. The Slavs and Avars hadn’t been able to sense Father Luke’s presence, but they were only men. He wondered what the wolf-demon would do, and remembered what Ampelus had said of the one that encountered a priest in the woods.

No sooner had he whispered a prayer that none of the wolf-demons would find Father Luke and him than one of them, eyes glowing even in forested night, strode out onto the game track the two men from Thessalonica were using. It snarled--it knew the priest was there.

George drew his sword and started to advance on the wolf. If it could not see him, he might hurt it badly-- that was how Perseus had slain Medusa. But before he got close enough to slash, Father Luke made the sign of the cross and said, “Depart, in the name of God.”

The wolf howled. It sat back on its haunches in absurd surprise, as if the priest had hit it in the muzzle with a stick. Then, awkwardly, it turned and ran, tail between its legs--again, for all the world like a beaten dog.

“How--how did you do that, Your Reverence?” George asked in a low voice. “These creatures, they--”

“I have faith,” Father Luke said calmly. “I need nothing more.”

Remembering Father Gregory, whom the water-demigod had killed, George slowly nodded. The other priest, the one Ampelus had watched, must have been uncertain or arrogant, too. Father Luke, as far as the shoemaker could tell, had neither arrogance nor uncertainty in him.

They went on, stumbling through the undergrowth. More wolf-demons gave cry, but none came near. He’s put the fear of God in them, George thought. Most of the time, that was only a phrase. Not here. Not now.

And then, instead of the wolf-demon Father Luke had routed, Vucji Pastir blocked his way through the woods. As he had with the wolf, the priest crossed himself and said, “Depart, in the name of God.”

Vucji Pastir’s eyes, always protuberant, almost popped out of his head. Their glow, and that of his hair and beard, dimmed a little. But he did not depart, nor even retreat. “You are strong, priest,” he said, “but not strong enough to defeat the shepherd of the wolves.” As it had in Georges earlier meeting with him, his voice sounded directly in the shoemakers mind, and no doubt in that of Father Luke as well.

“Depart,” Father Luke repeated. “In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the name of the holy Virgin Mother of God, in the name of St. Demetrius the chief martyr, in the name of gentle St. Catherine, in the name of St. Elias whom I serve--depart, depart, depart!”

Now Vucji Pastir’s eyes blazed. He opened his mouth wide, showing his own fierce teeth. A great laugh burst from him. “Are you deaf, foolish priest? You have not the strength to make me do your will. I shall not leave if you tell me once, if you tell me three times, or if you tell me three hundred. Flee now, I tell you in the name of great Vucji Pastir--flee or be my meat.”

As had been true when George came down to Thessalonica with Perseus’ cap on his head, the shepherd of the wolves could not tell he was there. If anything, Vucji Pastir was less concerned now than he had been before, for George’s presence on the way down had troubled him. Now, intent on making Father Luke his victim, he heeded nothing less.

The priest stood his ground, defiant but weak. George wondered what he thought he could do against an angry demigod his spiritual force had proved unable to rout. Whatever it was, Father Luke never got the chance to try it. Vucji Pastir had come within a couple of paces of the priest when George drove his sword into the small of the Slavic demigod’s back.

Vucji Pastir screamed, a great bellow of mingled astonishment and anguish. George pulled out the sword and stabbed the demigod again, this time in the side. He said nothing, not wanting to give the shepherd of the wolves any clue about where or what he was beyond the wounds themselves.

He stabbed Vucji Pastir for a third time. He tried for the demigod’s throat, but succeeded only in striking his shoulder. “Murder!” Vucji Pastir cried, to whom or what the shoemaker did not know. “This vile priest does murder!”

“Depart, in the name of God,” Father Luke said again.

And Vucji Pastir ran, screaming still. Maybe the holy name had more effect on him once he was hurt, as had been true with the wolf-demon. Maybe he was simply afraid of the holy man who had hurt him so horribly without moving from where he stood. George did not think Vucji Pastir slain, despite his shrieks. Had he struck off the demigod’s head, then--perhaps. But perhaps not, too.

Father Luke said, “He would have done better had he hearkened when I bade him leave. I would have left him in peace, other than having him gone. As it was, he suffered for his stupidity.”

“What would you have done if I weren’t along?” George asked.

“I don’t know,” Father Luke answered. “I expect I would have managed, one way or another. God provides. How He provides will differ according to the circumstances, I am sure. He is not wasteful, but uses whatever He has handy.”

George thought about that. To his way of looking at the world, it was taking a long chance. Irene would have said--Irene had said--he lived too much in the world of the ordinary senses and not enough in the world of the spirit. Most of his experience with the world of the spirit since the Slavs and Avars laid siege to Thessalonica had frightened the whey out of him.

Lessons came from the world of the ordinary senses, too. He drew one now: “We’d better get going, before something else dreadful happens to us here.”

“That makes excellent sense,” Father Luke said. He and George moved deeper into the hills. The quiet struck at George. All the wolf-demons had left off their terrifying howling after their shepherd was hurt. Maybe that meant they’d all fled back to their lairs. But maybe not, too. George did not want to find out the hard way.

When dawn began making the hillsides go from black to gray, a large bush by the side of the path quivered. At first George, who by then was so tired he had trouble putting one foot in front of the other, thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then he realized another of Vucji Pastir’s wolves might have found Father Luke and him after all. But from behind the bush stepped not a wolf-demon but Ampelus and Ithys.

Quickly, George spoke to Father Luke: “Don’t frighten them off, Your Reverence. They’re the people, uh, powers we’re looking for.”

“I see a mortal here.” Ampelus pointed to Father Luke, who was staring back at him with frank fascination. The satyr turned and pointed in the direction from which George’s voice had come. “I hear a mortal there. These are the mortals we seek, then.”

If the satyrs had dared come so far down in the hills, George thought he could safely take off Perseus’ cap. “Ha!” Ithys said. “Is--are--two mortals, for true.” As Ampelus had done, he pointed to Father Luke and George in turn, but he used phallus rather than forefinger. George had seen enough of satyrs’ ways not to be surprised or offended. He wondered what Father Luke thought.

Whatever it was, the priest kept it to himself. To the satyrs, he said, “Take us on to your friends, so we can all talk about how we are going to fight against the Slavs and the Avars and the powers they’ve brought into this country.”

Ithys pointed to George again, this time with a hand: perhaps a gesture of respect. “He does what he says he does,” the satyr said to Ampelus. “Not many mortals like that.”

“Truth--not many,” Ampelus agreed.

That made George proud. He yawned, then nodded toward Father Luke. “Here is a truly good man whose word is truly good.” He introduced Father Luke and the satyrs.

“If I say a thing, I will try to do it,” the priest said. “If I do not think I can do it, or if I do not think I should do it, I will not say it.” He had humility in him, but no false modesty. Being around him had helped educate George to the difference.

“We go, then,” Ampelus said. “Talk with centaurs.” He rolled his eyes. “Centaurs like talk. Centaurs like lots of talk. Maybe, good mortal who does and not says, you make centaurs do more, not say so much.”

“Redeeming a centaur, even if only from loquaciousness, would be a deed worth trying,” Father Luke said with a smile. “Whether I can or not, though, remains to be seen.” He waved ahead. “Lead us, and I’ll find out.”

Together, the satyrs and the men went deeper into the hills above Thessalonica. Ithys and Ampelus walked warily, stealing glances at Father Luke and every now and then, when they got so close it made them nervous, skipping back from him. They knew the power he held, and did not quite trust him not to loose it against them.

George could not tell whether they took a shortcut through the hills that lay beyond those he knew. For one thing, he was so tired, even a shortcut would have seemed dreadfully long. For another, having come so far in the night, he could not be sure where he and Father Luke were when the satyrs found them. Since that point was unfamiliar, everything after it seemed strange, too.

Then, without any warning, almost as if a wolf-demon, Nephele stepped out into the path in front of them. The female centaur nodded to George and asked, “This is the cleric of whom you spoke?”

“Yes,” he answered. Having introduced priest and satyrs, he introduced priest and centaur without a qualm.

Father Luke bowed as if Nephele were a lady high in the court at Constantinople. “I am honored to meet you,” he said. “I am honored you would let me meet you.” In an aside to George, he murmured, “I have, every once in a while, regretted my vows of celibacy. I never expected to do that quite like this, though.”

However quietly he spoke, Nephele heard him. The female centaur threw back its head and laughed. Listening to that laugh with his eyes closed, George might have thought it came from a drinking companion in a tavern. Looking at Nephele, he did not want to close his eyes-- on the contrary. To Father Luke, the centaur said, “I take’t as a compliment, being sure ‘twas meant so.”

“Er--yes,” the priest said. George could not recall having seen him flustered before. He did now.

“Onward, then.” Nephele turned to lead them. Seen from behind, the centaur seemed less human than when viewed straight on.

They came to the encampment bare moments after George realized they were on the path leading to it. Stusippus spotted them first, and made a sound more like a birdcall than any speech George had ever heard. The centaurs in the camp came out of their lean-tos. Demetrius cantered up to Father Luke, who stared at him in delight. “I never thought of there being young centaurs,” he said to George.

“I know what you mean,” the shoemaker answered. “Neither did I.”

Several centaurs whom George had not seen before were among those crowding round him and Father Luke. He caught a couple of names--Pholus, Tachypus (a female)--but missed more.

Crotus still seemed to lead the band. The male inclined its head to Father Luke. “We are told you fear not and despise not the linking of your power and our own against that to which both stand opposed.”

“If it can be done, I think we can do it,” the priest replied. “We have shared this land many years now; we can live at peace.”

“By share you mean your taking and our yielding,” Crotus pointed out, not without bitterness. “That you be preferred to the incomers and their powers, who would slaughter us for sport, meaneth not you are beloved.”

“I understand as much,” Father Luke said. “For the time being, though, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Xanthippe said, “Reasoning thus, we may cooperate, one side with the other. And afterwards, remembering our aid, it may be that you prove more inclined to leave us in peace.”

“For myself, I am willing,” Father Luke said. “I must tell you, though, for I would not he to you, that my superior, Eusebius, will remain set in his ways. To expect him to change is as foredoomed a hope for you as for him to expect you to become a member of my faith.”

“For the honesty, we are grateful,” Crotus said. The other centaurs and satyrs nodded. The male went on, “For the sentiment, we would it were otherwise.” The nods came again. Sighing, Crotus observed, “Necessity driveth all; we can but yield to it.”

George wondered how much that attitude had to do with the failure of the old gods against Christianity. Bishop Eusebius and, no doubt, Father Luke, too, in his gentler way, were convinced their faith would triumph, regardless of the adversities it faced. That was their notion of necessity: not yielding to whatever the passage of time might bring against them.

Nephele set hands on the narrowing of human waist above the outswelling into horses body. “Very well, priest: you say you are fain to make alliance with us. How then, this being so, shall we best combine against the foe tormenting us both?”

“How?” Father Luke looked straight at the female centaur, which impressed George. The priest smiled, but not altogether happily. “My dear, at the moment I have no idea.”